As surgical and medical instruments grow in complexity, the control of the various instruments needed to conduct a surgery becomes more complex and costly in both personnel training and the surgical time needed to operate the equipment. In the late 20th century, state-of-the-art operating rooms included several electronic surgical instruments (e.g. electrosurgical units, insufflators, endoscopes, etc.). These instruments were separately operated by the surgeon and members of the surgical team. The industry improved upon this type of operating room by integrating the various instruments into a unified system. With this setup, the surgeon or members of the surgical team use a central controller (‘room controller’ or ‘surgical control unit’) to control many of the instruments through a single interface, preferably a graphical-user interface. Generally speaking, such central control units are built using modified personal computers, and the operating rooms that use them are commonly referred to as “digital operating rooms”.
With the establishment of the digital operating room came the need for more portable, safe, and customizable remote control systems for operating room equipment. Although remote controls for surgical equipment are convenient and help maintain sterility, they have introduced certain heretofore unknown safety issues. One such safety issue is the problem of surgeons issuing commands into control devices that are mated inadvertently with a nearby room's surgical control unit. In that situation, a surgeon may attempt to control a surgical control unit present in the room they are occupying, only to inadvertently control another surgical control unit in a nearby room where an unrelated procedure is being performed. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that a surgeon may repeat commands in a vain attempt to operate the surgical control unit in the room they are occupying. This can result in injury to the patient and surgical team and/or damage to the equipment in the nearby room.
Various operating room remote control devices are known in the industry. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,175,590 shows portable remote control devices and a network of monitoring receivers that sense the presence of a remote control device and enable or disable the device. However, such systems require an extensive monitoring network to be installed and suffer from null zones where devices cannot be located. U.S. Publication No. 2011/0063429, commonly owned by the present applicant, describes a method of pairing a command microphone with equipment, and maintaining the pairing using confirmation sounds received by the microphone itself. Such systems are useful for pairing microphones but not useful for pairing other types of devices without a microphone. U.S. Pat. No. 7,463,813 shows a remote control device which is paired with medical equipment by a verification code. The code is then erased after a predetermined time interval to prevent inadvertent use of the controller. These types of systems suffer from potential user error and may inadvertently conclude a command authorization pairing during a procedure that takes longer than expected. Further, there is a tendency for personnel to avoid expiration by deliberately entering a procedure time above the actual time, which may lead to erroneous commands being issued. U.S. Publication No. 2009/0300507 shows an operating room remote control that is activated and deactivated by passing through an RFID portal at the door of the operating room. Such systems, however, are limited in that they require a single entry way to the operating area, and do not directly monitor the command device location on an ongoing basis.
There remains a need in the art for a safety system that prevents the inadvertent control of surgical control units with wireless command input devices.